It can be a fresh sheet of paper, a blank screen, a new job, or even a new home. This week, we turned the calendar page and we’re in a whole new year. As if to highlight the newness of 2013, nature painted our area with a fresh coat of whitewash in the form of a blanket of snow.

It would be wonderful if time could simply clear the slates of our lives for the new year as well… so a new day or year would make mistakes, troubles, or unhappy events disappear and we could just start again as if they never happened.

Ah, well.

Unfortunately, we have to create our own fresh starts. We have to take responsibility for our own unwise dietary choices, dubious financial decisions, and poorly chosen words. And we have to learn to get past the mistakes of others and twists of fate as well.

Well, at least we have to if we really want a fresh start. The key to a fresh start is owning up to, and letting go of, the past – so we can actually turn that page.

With that in mind, I plan to enter this year with a true sense of resolution – resolving to work harder at my goals, resolving to reach out to loved ones more. The celebration of the new year is a great opportunity to assess where we are and really think about what we want to do with our lives.

We can ignore the New Year opportunity, of course. We can treat January like any other month, and 2013 like every other year. We can stay entrenched in whatever habits we have and assume that there will be time “later” to catch up with whatever changes we know we should probably be making.

As for me, looking out my window at the snow, I notice tiny footprints have appeared in the blanket on our porch… and I can’t wait to begin leaving my mark on the landscape of this new year as well. In fact, I am resolute.